Red Demon (21 page)

“That’s a TV. I’ll explain it later.” He hit the OFF button on the remote, and instantly the room was filled with silence.

She seemed to remember her scanty attire then, and wrapped both arms about herself, huddling on the floor. “You should not see me in such a state,” she told him, her pale face growing flushed. “It is inappropriate.”

He flopped down on the sofa, laughing. “Isn’t it a little late to be worrying about what’s appropriate? You were ready to hand over your virginity to me last night. Remember?”

She dropped her gaze. “I was a bit carried away in the moment.”

“Oh, so that plan’s a no-go, huh?” he teased, feeling his groin respond to the memory of how she’d unbuttoned her gown the night before. “All talk and no play, are we, now that you’ve convinced me that you really are
my
Jules?”

Her breathing became quick and heavy, and she gathered her hair in her hands, spreading it over her right shoulder. He swallowed, tracking the gesture visually, drinking in her relaxed femininity. And wishing it were his hand drawing those thick waves within his own grasp. The color was breathtakingly beautiful, a rare hue of deep auburn highlighted by shimmers of gold. He had the sensation that it was almost a living part of her, an expression of her deepest, most hidden passions.

“Don’t pull your hair back,” he said. “All that wild beauty of yours was concealed enough in the past. Not now, sweetheart. And I’m eager to see all of you . . . every last exposed bit of you.”

She blushed even harder. He relaxed into the sofa, satisfied—proud and cocksure as he watched her, loving the way she reacted to his flirtations.

“I want to touch your hair,” he told her, surprised by the sultry sound of his own voice. “Let me brush it for you.”

She grew wide-eyed. “I don’t think . . . That’s not appropriate, either, Aristos.”

“It is in this time.”

“Between lovers, I suppose.”

“Aren’t we going to be?” he drawled. “Because that’s the message you started sending the moment you landed in my room last night.”

She dropped her gaze, saying nothing with words, yet promising
everything
with the slow, sensual smile that spread across her face. “Well. If you insist, sir.”

“I most definitely do.”

“I’ve no idea where a brush might even be.” She glanced about the room, but he was already on his way to the bathroom. Emma had told him where to find all the toiletries Juliana would need—brush, shampoo, toothpaste.

Having located the brush, he walked back to the main recreation room. Juliana had positioned herself on the sofa, right beside where he’d been.

With a shy, inviting look, she fanned her hair across her shoulders, spreading it out. Never before had he seen her quite like this, so unbound, not in the formal Victorian era—but there had been plenty of nights when he’d burned in his bed. Dreaming of a moment just like this one, of stripping away all the corsets and petticoats and layers of clothing, so that only Juliana Tiades lay waiting for him. Opening to him and only him.

He turned the large brush in his hand, but then set it down. Slowly, carefully, he began combing his fingers through the waving strands, savoring the silky feel beneath his touch. Leaning forward, he pressed his face to the top of her head. She smelled alive, fresh. Jasmine and gardens, so feminine.

He inhaled again and then turned his face, resting his cheek against her crown. “I always loved the scent of you,” he admitted hoarsely. “I never knew you were this incredibly beautiful, though.”

“You saw me often.”

“Oh, no. Not like this. Never so . . . natural, with your hair loose and your body free. Without all that damned clothing hemming you in.”

She giggled, her shoulders shaking lightly. “As I recall, Aristos, you were rather fond of a corset’s effect.”

“I was much fonder of imagining you without one.” He slid one large hand to her waist, stroking the narrow curve. It was shocking, not to feel layers of clothing, to encounter almost no separation between his touch and her body.

She didn’t move; in fact, she hardly breathed at all, and that felt like an invitation to him. He eased his hand upward along her ribs, then inward, until the delicate, full swell of her right breast filled his palm. Her nipple puckered beneath the silk in reaction, and he stroked a light circle, making his touch as gentle and tantalizing as possible.

She moaned, a quiet, low sound that was like a hallelujah right to his groin. His cock grew even thicker than it already was, and she turned in his arms. At once they were tangled together, all the hesitancy and shy exploration that they’d maintained when she’d been alive now gone—rushed away in the tide of each other’s bodies and caresses, just as it had been the night before. Jules 2.0 definitely knew how to give him a head rush, just not the kind involving his brain.

He pulled her flush against him, seizing her mouth with his own. Their tongues began their dance again, only this time it was as if they meant to consume each other. He wrapped both arms about her back, urging her up against his chest. In reaction, she practically crawled into his lap, and suddenly he was falling backward, drawing her atop his much larger body. She followed him down, all the way, their shared kiss growing hotter and deeper. Desperately urgent.

Dimly, he was aware that his thighs had fallen partially open and that he was pressing her right up against his erection. And he also wondered whether feeling such raw maleness, a new experience for her, was shocking or intimidating.

She answered that concern by moving slightly against him, urging their hips even closer together.

With a gasp, he broke their kiss, cupping her face in his palms. Her disheveled hair fell like a waterfall across his face, and he blew out a breath, trying to see her eyes. She raked her thick locks out of the way, staring down at him. Her light blue eyes swam with lust and need, darker than he’d ever seen them, pupils enlarged with arousal.

She balanced herself atop him by splaying a palm atop his chest, and when a curl fell in front of her eyes again, she blew it out of the way. “Sir, surely you do not mean to stop now?” She watched him through narrowed, intense eyes, her breasts lifting with aroused pants.

“I think, Jules”—he barked a laugh—“that we can drop ‘sir’ from your vocabulary, at least when you’re addressing me.”

Or undressing me, for that matter
, he thought wickedly.

She smiled, leaning down to kiss him. She tilted her head sideways, tentative, as if still trying to make sure they fit together after their years apart. He growled, slid a palm behind her nape, and dragged her mouth to his. He didn’t make it dainty; he didn’t worry about going slow—he wanted to get inside her, all into her, and since he couldn’t do that with the rest of his body, not here in the main recreation room, not with his brothers and friends just one floor away . . . he made love to her with his mouth. With one of the hottest kisses he’d ever given a woman in his eternal life. He thrust his tongue against hers, lapping and twining, and he surged upward with his hips, riding that forceful kiss off the sofa beneath him.

She moaned, a low, purring sound that he’d never elicited from her before, and then she pressed her own hips downward, meeting his thrust. Her robe fell open, and for one suspended moment, he was aware of her bare skin . . . those feminine legs and rounded hips moving atop him. The frantic, feminine motion made one point very clear: She meant to take him inside herself. Not later, but now.

He swept his right palm down her back, the silk of her gown moving like flower petals beneath his hand; it was wicked, but he intended to drag the hem of her gown even higher. Squeeze her buttocks in his big hands, but first—and he’d be tender about it—he intended to peel her panties down her hips, letting the cool morning air kiss the bare skin of her bottom. She was riding high atop him, and his cock strained against his zipper as he pictured her. That pert, round little ass of hers, stripped bare . . . exposed and free as she moved her hips in rhythm with his own.

Their kiss grew hotter and much, much deeper—dangerously so, with Jules matching the swirling motion of her tongue with the swelling tempo of her hips, rocking them in a heated crescendo.

Ari moaned harshly, the sound lost in Jules’s mouth and that out of control, wild-haired, tangled-limbed kiss. He slid his hand beneath the silk of her panties, and the warm skin of her left buttock filled his palm like a soft, ripe melon.

Oh, baby, I want to eat you up
, he thought.

He tugged at her panties, rolling them down—but not nearly as gently as he’d promised himself. He was too worked up, almost overwhelmed with how badly he needed her, needed to get so much closer. Rubbing her rounded bottom in his palm, he pushed her against his groin, began working her into an even more aggressive rhythm. Each time he bucked upward off the sofa, he rode out their passion, following it through with his hips. It was like catching a kick-ass wave over on Tybee. Only the rush was a thousand times more intense, more thrilling to every part of his anatomy and soul.

He caressed her rounded bottom, loving that it was so shapely, savoring the way she reacted with slight shivers. No man had ever touched her, not like this, and he felt a swell of pride fill his chest as she whimpered her pleasure.

Her hair was all over his face, even in their mouths, but he couldn’t stop what was mounting, the heat that was spiraling higher and higher between their bodies. He slid his palm from her sweet little ass and, very cautiously, moved his fingers lower, down to where he really wanted to be. Parting her legs, he felt slick wetness, and his mouth nearly watered with the need to taste it.

He slid his fingers lower still, parting the delicate folds of skin between her legs. Her body tensed; she broke the kiss, pressing her mouth against his jaw. A low, raw groan dragged across her lips. It wasn’t even elegant, just filled with honesty and need.

And then she cocked her hips off of him by several inches, still panting against his cheek, and began reaching between their lower bodies. Did she mean to stroke him as she’d done in Leonidas’s study last night? She’d had his pants halfway to his personal equator when he’d finally put the brakes on.

His hard-on grew painfully tight as she ran firm strokes along his length. “I want . . . I want you free, too.” She gasped the words out, moving her head so as to get some of their hair out of the way—his was almost as much of a mess as hers, what with the sheen of sweat already forming on his brow and neck. “Help me unfasten your pants, Aristos.”

She lifted slightly, pressing her forehead against his, moved her hand to his fly, and managed to unsnap it with one deft flick of her fingers.

“Sure you never done this before?” He laughed, his erection pushing hard against the front of his jeans in reaction. Every touch of hers seemed to make his cock strain and swell even more, although he doubted that was truly possible.

“Juliana,” he groaned as she managed to lower his zipper an inch or so. He reached between them, taking hold of her wrist. “No, sweetheart. Can’t. Can’t do it. Not now.” He could practically feel his balls changing hue. Maybe the Blue Man Group could use a new member, he thought, because these balls of his were going to be aching like they’d been given a shiner in just a few more minutes.

She planted both hands about his head, her full body still draped down the length of his own. “Why not?” she asked in a voice that mirrored his sentiments completely. “We must absolutely continue.”

He shook his head, groaning back into the pillow. “Any second now? The Three Musketeers, aka Emma, Sophie, and Shay, are gonna come bounding down those steps, ready to bust our asses.”

“Oh, to be discovered thusly would be most embarrassing,” she agreed, brushing at her hair. “But surely they understand that we need more time.” She glanced over her shoulder toward the open door to her new bedroom. “Private time, of course.”

“Actually, I know for a fact,” he said with a groan of sexual frustration, “that the girls want to take you shopping. That’s the real issue. And they’ll be humping around down here any second.” He grunted at his ironic word choice. “So to speak.”

“But I don’t need any clothes. Not for
these
sorts of activities,” Juliana whispered demurely. Then with a daring, come-hither look, she actually shrugged out of the robe, by way of making her point. All that remained between him and those inches of creamy, bare skin was a flimsy little spaghetti-strapped affair.

He got an eyeful of her breasts as she tossed the robe to the side, almost catching a glimpse of her right nipple. It beaded beneath the silk, too, revealing how aroused she was. His fingertips itched with the urge to stroke it through the silk, to make a little circular motion of that cool fabric against her heated breast.

On the steps, he heard laughter and female voices. “Here comes the ground assault,” he muttered with a groan, easing her up off of him. “So, yeah, on the fashion thing? Maybe you should pick out something that’s easy to take off.”

“Like you and the others?” She gave his solid black T-shirt a tug. “Such simple design. No buttons, no fasteners.”

“It’s called a T-shirt.” His mind flooded with a very vivid picture of her seizing his shirt’s hem and dragging it over his head. He rubbed his tight abdomen, wondering whether she’d like what he had to offer her as a lover. He wasn’t vain, but he knew he had a fine, developed physique; not because he thought he was special or anything. Because if the Spartans valued anything, strove for anything, it was always the perfection of their masculine forms. To become fighting weapons, yes, but to appreciate the beauty of their own maleness.

This had been the heart of their offerings to the god Eros, the reason they’d maintained a temple to him at their gymnasium: to seek his blessing on their masculine splendor.